property which King William had, as it was phrased, been deceived
into giving away.

On the seventh of February 1698, this subject, destined to
irritate the public mind at intervals during many years, was
brought under the consideration of the House of Commons. The
opposition asked leave to bring in a bill vacating all grants of
Crown property which had been made since the Revolution. The
ministers were in a great strait; the public feeling was strong;
a general election was approaching; it was dangerous and it would
probably be vain to encounter the prevailing sentiment directly.
But the shock which could not be resisted might be eluded. The
ministry accordingly professed to find no fault with the proposed
bill, except that it did not go far enough, and moved for leave
to bring in two more bills, one for annulling the grants of James
the Second, the other for annulling the grants of Charles the
Second. The Tories were caught in their own snare. For most of
the grants of Charles and James had been made to Tories; and a
resumption of those grants would have reduced some of the chiefs
of the Tory party to poverty. Yet it was impossible to draw a
distinction between the grants of William and those of his two
predecessors. Nobody could pretend that the law had been altered
since his accession. If, therefore, the grants of the Stuarts
were legal, so were his; if his grants were illegal, so were the
grants of his uncles. And, if both his grants and the grants of
his uncles were illegal, it was absurd to say that the mere lapse
of time made a difference. For not only was it part of the
alphabet of the law that there was no prescription against the
Crown, but the thirty-eight years which had elapsed since the
Restoration would not have sufficed to bar a writ of right